Who Makes a Good Role Model For Muslim Men?
When men are not allowed to look up to a king, a general, or a mystical figure of some kind; their inward desire to look up to a man they perceive as their superior doesn’t just cease. Rather, it will reflect itself in a malformed way that projects their deracinated state. Men like this will go on to idolize celebrities, social media stars, fictional characters written and drawn by artists, or even such artists themselves.
The desire to look up to such men lies at a biological level for the masses of men in any culture. Some like to point to the “wolf pack” with a superior member as the most popular example, but more poignant are the human, historical examples that point to this fact. In King, Warrior, Magician, Lover; Gillette and Moore explain how the “King” archetypes manifest themselves naturally through their fatherly and sacrificial qualities, and by making their subordinates feel like miniature kings in their own smaller domains. They give up lives of individual pursuit to be in service to a great number, to establish the foundations for a strong and fertile civilization.
One wonders in this context — who do Muslim men have as living examples of such a thing today?
Recently, one of the biggest conversations surrounding the internet stardom of guys like Andrew Tate, whose been Muslim for several months now, is their alleged suitability to be “role models” for Muslim men. He’s the main example right now, but this applies equally well to any big “figure” that becomes famous among men online or otherwise (e.g. Kevin Samuels with black men). It’s humiliating to acknowledge that men in these positions are even capable of being looked up to due to the lack of real heroes and role models in the physical world, but we work with what our era provides us.
Unsurprisingly though, this conversation has been led by women, who’ve baited many of their male counterparts to foolishly comply with their frame of discussion. What it later sparked was the subject I’m addressing here — the fact that indeed, we have a big lack in living examples of strong Muslim men who are role models and heroes to the rest of us.
Often, any time a man makes even the most base insinuation that a guy like Tate for example has any kind of positive effect on his audience, you’re met with a common shrieking complaint, often thrown with effeminate sarcasm: “Oh, so this is who Muslim men look up to now? Muslim men used to go to WAR, they used to follow the COMPANIONS into battle, but now they watch Andrew TATE?”
The matriarchy dictates, in all seriousness, that they’re the authorities who decide what are good “role models” for Muslim men and who aren’t. They put themselves in these positions despite having a mythological education regarding every branch of mainstream Islam (Bint Fiqh, Bint Seerah). They claim to know what a “good man” is, despite not being able to recognize a man of real strength & magnanimity even if he were riding through their sewer-street cities with a hundred cavalry divisions. There are dozens of cultural diseases indicated in such a statement that has led the average female in the West to be animated in this way, but some are just too obvious.
First of all, there’s an incomparable set of differences between who Muslim men idolize as contemporaries (the living) and who they idolize eternally (the dead). A Mamluk soldier of Baybars loved and admired him as a commander whom he saw, prayed behind, and followed into battle. Still, his eternal love lied with the Prophet ﷺ and his companions, especially those he might hold a personal connection to in relation to his lifestyle. Muslim men who are soldiers appreciate the supremacy of Ali ibn Abu-Talib RA in battle to a much higher degree than calligraphers and shepherds; just as Muslim poets relate in a more direct way to the eloquence of Hassan ibn Thabit RA in defending the status of the Prophet ﷺ with words rather than arrows.
Today however, most Muslim men don’t have the cultural expectation for specialization of this kind anymore. In most developing Muslim nations as well as the diaspora in the West, the expectation for men by their parents and communities is the same: get a high-paying job, get married, and be adequately moral and religious by our standards. That’s it. Just a quiet, bugman life where they live as content cogs for the financial and social comfort of everyone else. This is the status quo that’s hammered into young Muslim men today before the alleged “life of sin” that outsiders tempt them with. Just a hollow existence that’s sacrificial for the sake of it. Duty for the sake of duty with nothing we value given in return, while any desire for individual self-excellence (that ironically is exactly what leads to positive cultural change) is shamed and criticized. It’s a disgusting way to direct men’s lives, and there’s no pharisaic explanation for why ‘ACTUALLY, in Islam, you’re SUPPOSED to give your entire life to the “service” of others in quiet desperation.’
You see this sentiment enacted almost daily now, when the entire life and character of the Prophet ﷺ is reimagined by these people as that of a servant and a slave rather than the balanced reality of the Seerah. They’ll beat you with statements like “the Prophet was always in the service of his family,” and portray his several marriages as mere acts of welfare rather than revelation from God, accompanied of course by his own humble desire to marry them.
Other than the outright blasphemies that I plan on addressing at a separate time - the reason these domesticated versions of the story of the Prophet ﷺ exist is to target and quiet you when you express any kind of discontent with the absolute misery modern, matriarchal life inflicts.When random females online bemoan you for praising a man of renown in any way and claim you’re betraying the memory of the Prophet ﷺ - it’s this fake version of him they have in their heads. They’re not thinking of the man who told his wives to go behind the curtain when a blind companion was visiting him. They’re not thinking of the man who condemned a poet to death for blaspheming against him and Islam. They’re not thinking of the man who launched a spear into the throat of one of Islam’s worst enemies at Uhud (after having been injured severely). Much of what they claim to “believe” in regarding the Prophet ﷺ, unfortunately, doesn’t even exist outside of their liberal bubbles made up of “fun fact” style half-truths and outright lies.
I should also clarify that regarding Tate, I find the question of his idolization fruitless. I never thought that his purpose was to be a role model or some influencer king for young men as a matter of lifestyle. His original purpose and what he always excelled at was what he got famous for disrupting mainstream relationships and political discourse and waking men up to the fact they’re living fake lives that resemble a shadow of a shadow. In fact, I thought it was clear that that’s what he enjoyed most about his stardom.
Regarding his vices, we theologically don’t hold converts to account for their days of ignorance, but it’s also worth noting that even if he never converted I’d still tell you to ignore whatever the past was of a figure you’re learning from anyway. Many guys point out the double standard of accusing women who criticize men’s idolization standards for having horrible female role models — it’s way more effective to point out the awful men who these women still are emotionally attached to. Chris Brown didn’t lose any fans of his music in the long term despite beating up Rihanna, one of the most beloved women on planet earth. Male actors, YouTubers, Tiktokers, and the like are notorious for large numbers of them being unearthed as womanizers, “abusers,” shady businessmen, etc., yet this has shown to rarely hurt their social lives or likeability among women after a few years of being “EXPOSED.”
The reality is that even if your favorite social media guys that your wife/girlfriend hates were void of all their big sins, she’d still hate them, because that’s not why they’re really hated. Any guy who sticks a shiv in the modern matriarchy’s fat disgusting back folds activates the MK Ultra programming of millions online and in real life. Like clockwork, whenever a man (or woman!) of any shape, color, or background speaks out about men needing to lift weights, work around the financial system, or just not listen to gay leftist propaganda about how they should live their lives — that’s a heckin’ FASCISM bro! You’re being an extremist! You’re a conspiracy theorist! Just be NORMAL man! Crack open an IPA with the boys and teabag each other, that’s just how you gotta live bro!
This might be my most controversial point — and my aim isn’t to offend anyone — but when women also object to our like of any famous male figure with examples from their family (“My father is a real traditionally masculine man! This Tate guy is fake! How would these guys’ fathers feel about them liking Tate?”), please don’t fall for it. This is called emotional blackmail. Women, even if well-intentioned, use these arguments to put you in an emotional state to disregard the lived reality around you. They don’t even love their own fathers for the reasons they think they do. When they refer to them as “traditionally masculine men,” they only mean it in terms of what benefits them (i.e. the birthday presents and vacations). Ask yourself, how many of these girls are saying this whilst appreciative of the fact they had a curfew growing up?
And, sorry to tell you, but even the idealized version many of you have of your parents isn’t what you should strive for necessarily. It’s good to be a hardworking man for your family, but there’s nothing more tragic than falling into that role, having 40 years go by, then dying without having a single one of your sons being able to recall any lasting, masculine experience you had with them that left an impact on their being. I’m sure many of you feel the same way deep down.
Regardless, we will love, and always love, for the rest of our lives, the Messenger ﷺ, the rest of the Prophets AS, and their loyal companions, and hold them up as our highest examples. This isn’t negotiable or subject to doubt, for any man of faith.
And at the same time, we’ll continue to recognize, admire, congratulate, and learn from those living men who exceed us in matters of this world both religious and secular, and it shouldn’t matter how many 300lb blue-haired janitorinos complain about it.
The accepted opinion by most scholars is that every marriage of the Prophet ﷺ was commanded by wahy, a religious revelation from God.
Jazakallah akhi